Coulee Bend Morgan Farm is a small morgan breeding farm with big goals. The goal is to breed high quality morgans that possess athleticism, beauty, brains, and most importantly have the dispositions that make them easy to train and easy to handle. The farm logo is ‘ Striving to raise show quality morgans that are family oriented’.
Coulee Bend Morgans is owned and operated by Lyle & Cindy Dietz, and is located 2 miles north of Galahad, Alberta, in beautiful central Alberta. Getting into raising horses was a way to diversify the farming operation on the existing family owned grain farm. By bringing in quality breeding animals, and promoting them on the local, National and Inter-National market, the goal that was set forth has become a reality.
All the foals born at Coulee Bend are handled from birth. We are present for the births of all the foals, and the handling starts immediately. The mares are comfortable with us being in the foaling stall and as soon as the foal is free of the mare, we start ‘imprinting’ the foals. Imprinting is something we consider to be invaluable in teaching a foal the basics of handling. They are rubbed all over until they are comfortable with the handling, taught to give to pressure, pick up their feet, and many other things that make their handling later on go much smoother.
We also like to show our young horses in the Alberta Morgan Futurity. This is the largest Morgan show in Canada, and offers the largest Futurity classes. Every foal nominated by Coulee Bend has placed in the Top Ten since they started showing – but 2002 was a banner year for their breeding program. The two foals that participated in the Weanling Futurity each won major awards. Coulee Bend Heritage, a weanling black colt, was the Grand Champion Futurity Winner, and Coulee Bend Holiday Wish, a weanling chestnut filly, was the Reserve Grand Champion Futurity Winner !
The ‘Best of the Best’ foals are nominated to the World Morgan Futurity, and are eligible for the Futurity classes in the Oklahoma City World Show.
We also nominate foals into the Canadian Horse Incentive Program (C.H.I.P.), which is a program that promotes Canadian bred horses, and matches payouts at approved shows in Canada and the United States.
Outside breeding is a very big part of our business, and we offer individual mare pens to outside mares coming to the farm for breeding, as well as shipped semen to breeders in Canada and the United States. Lyle is a certified A.I. technician, and not only supervises the shipped semen, but does all the on farm A.I. breeding as well.
We both try to participate in and be quite active in the Alberta Morgan Horse Club as well as the Canadian Morgan Horse Association, holding various positions and working on committees. Lyle has served as Director and Vice-President in the Alberta Club, and has since moved on to Zone Director and Western Vice-President of the Canadian Morgan Horse Association. Cindy has been the Co-ordinator of the Alberta Morgan MatchMaker sales list for the past 5 years. This is a list of horses for sale and is offered as a marketing tool to members of the Club.
Showing our horses is something that we both enjoy immensely, but time constraints due to conflicts with our farming schedule often sees us working at home while our horses are competing at shows with the trainers. When we are able to attend, Lyle thoroughly enjoys the excitement of showing our In Hand horses, and has also moved on to Pleasure driving, and hunter pleasure. Cindy enjoys the ‘behind the scenes’ work of spit polishing the horses for the show ring, and providing ‘rail side’ encouragement!
We have made so many new friends through our horses, and it has been a wonderful experience to have gotten to know people all over Canada and the United States. We try to get to the World Show in Oklahoma every fall to get together and renew ties with as many of our friends as possible.
We love raising our morgans, and we invite you the check out our farm, our breeding program and our stock for sale.
The three stallions on the farm offer World Class bloodlines, with sires including UVM Promise, Futurity French Command and UVM Vanir. All the mares have either been show ring winners themselves, or are daughters of proven show ring winners. The bloodlines we have brought into Alberta are unique to Canadian breeders, and are proving to be very marketable.
Phone (780) 583-2128 - Fax (780) 583-2386
E-mail - lcdietz@telusplanet.net
Last Updated on Nov 13, 2002
By D.L.C. Consulting Inc.